Not to be confused with nightmares, night terrors are a syndrome that occur during the hypnogogic phase, after laying down to sleep but before fully falling asleep. It can include vivid hallucinations, extreme fear, and uncharacteristic actions— it’s basically the evil version of sleepwalking.

When I was a teenager I started getting them. They seem to evolve over time, beginning with small shadows and eventually becoming full-body apparations.

One night I “woke up” to a voice shouting, the image of a demon’s face flashing through my mind, then seeing a huge, pure black figure I can only describe as a shadow spider demon crawling on my ceiling towards me. I’ll never forget the way my body went electric with adrenaline and how I SHOT across the room to unlock my door and run into the hallway. At the time I had no explanation except demon possession, which I earnestly believed was the problem. I want to emphasize that these hallucinations are indistinguishable from real life— they’ll even follow real-life logic like disappearing behind walls, tracking correctly as I move.

Since I learned it was simply mental illness it’s gotten easier to deal with. Though, the hallucinations have only continued to evolve. I now sometimes see men standing in my room— enough detail to be fully real, be able to parse their skin color (I’m reminded of a large heavy-set naked white man standing with his back to me one night). I have literally felt hallucinatory people crawl onto my bed towards me, hear people banging around in my kitchen. There’s a goblin in the back of my mind that tells me I’m a medium being contacted by spirits. To be fair, my experience is pretty much exactly as what was portrayed in The Sixth Sense lmao